[CoC] - Friends and Cthulhu

[Lord Zardoz]

I am bored. And when I am bored, I tend to have very strange, and sometimes dangerous thoughts. People who know me in Meat Space can confirm this.

I like Call of Cthulhu. I hate the TV series Friends. I was thinking, just now, that I would really like to either play in, or create, a CoC adventure where the cast of Friends is subjected to some horrible and unspeakable fate at the hands of the Cthulhu mythos.

I want to see Rachel have her face torn off by a rampaging Byakhee. I want to have Phoebe devoured by her child after giving birth to The Dark Young of Shub Niggrath. I want to see Chandler become angry and Ross and gain bloody revenge by invoking the Unspeakable Oath. I want to laugh as Monica is abducted by the Mi-Go and enjoy the speactacle of her going insane after her brain is placed in a Cylinder. I want Joey to be suckered into becoming the sacrifice that awakens Cthulhu himself!

Failing that, I would like nothing more then to see the characters from that insipid and loathsome show succumb to the madness of Azathoth, and to engage in a spree of murder and mayhem so that my players may feel justified in slaying them.

So, does anyone have any suggestions and or reccomendations on ways to go about setting such a thing up?

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[TheAuldGrump]

I once ran a 'Celebrity Call of Cthulhu' game. The Players depicting various actors, not of course as they really are, but rather as they appear in movies. (What IS Jack Nicholson's Sanity anyway? And how can you tell when he's lost it?) Lots of light hearted fun on a Halloween night. (I remember Sly Stallone creeping through the manor with a Mac 10...)

You could do the same with friends, a dying relative, a will, and a basement filled with monsters....

The Auld Grump

 

[haiiro]

This sounds like it would make an excellent one shot game. You could play it for humor, or make it deadly serious and surprise everyone who expects it to be played for humor. If it works out, you might even consider trying to run it at a convention or two.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

The problem, as I see it, is that I have no real familiarity with the series. This is largely intentional, since I am certain that if I were to watch so much as one full episode, I would be compelled to tear my eyes from my skull and stomp on them. All I know of the show is that it is about the lives of 6 people who are so perpetually happy that only a steady and endless supply of mind altering drugs could explain it in real life. I had to spend a few minutes with Google to get so much as their names for my post.

That aside, I would imagine that transforming their idyllic lives into a horrific and bloody descent to the depths of insanity would not be difficult. I suppose one could start with one of the episodes as a Hook. Perhaps there is an episode where Rachel and Phobe a co workers cat or dog, but do not tell the others. In a normal episode, Hilarity would ensue as their comic and unlikly antics run amok as they try to hide the dog.

However, instead of finding the dog in Joey's closet ruining a pair of his designer shoes, something more sinister could be found. Perhaps instead of finding the dog in Joey closet, they find the dogs torn and bloody corpse with its head torn off, nailed to the wall by its tounge as the center of a profane altar to Nyrlathotep.

Or maybe, a few days after the dog is taken in, Chandler goes missing. And nothing is found of him for days unitl Joey and Ross are playing fetch with it using Chandler's Femur.

Or maybe the dog, known to mortal men by the name of Scruffy, is really a mask of Nyrlathotep, who tell's Ross that Phoebe shall give birth to the antichrist, and that he must slay her and her unborn baby. And when Chandler, Monica, Ross and Rachel get back from that coffee shop, they walk in Ross as is plunging a bloody steak knife repeatedly into Phoebses chest and stomping on the fetus of her unborn child, with Scruffy hiding under the table. And as Ross is hauled away in a Straight Jacket, no one beleves him when he says "But Scruffy told me that she was Evil. I had to do it to save the World!".

The problem is how to best involve the players, I think. Would we want the players to be an intrested third party, or do we want them to take the roles of the characters? I fear that if I let the players take the roles of Joey, Ross, Chandler, Rachel, Monica, and Phobe, that I would be compelled to inflict a TPK much too early in the session.

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[Alzrius]

I like the idea of doing it for humor (which would make it a closer to Friends than Cthulhu, but oh well). I can just see some of the lines that would come up:

Rachael: Ross you pig! You slept with another woman again?!

Ross: Okay, Rach, Shub-Nigguroth isn't exactly what you'd call a woman, so it really isn't cheating in that sense...she's more like some sort of animalistic thing from beyond the stars.

Joey: "Animalistic"? Whoa, man, I totally don't want you taking care of my pet duck anymore if livestock is your thing!

Ross: Joey, I think you miss the point here...

Chandler: Hey Ross, some guy named A. Zathoth or something says he's here to kick your ass for sleeping with his wife?

Monica: Way to go bro! I so do not want to be known as "the sister to the guy who screwed the space-freak-thing's wife"! You being a homewrecker is seriously ruining my life here!

Ross: Ruining your life? Um, excuse me Monica, who's the one about to be devoured by an eldritch horror here? Look, Chandler, just tell him I'm not seeing anymore Great Old Ones until after I work things out here with Rachael!

Phoebe: Ewww you slept with an old lady? You're sick Ross! At least the livestock I could understand!

::everyone stares at Phoebe::

Phoebe: What? Animals are cute and cuddly and I love to cuddle after some hard lovin'!

...it might just be the most hysterical game ever run.